Irish townsfolk besieged by confused smut channel callers Residents of the picturesque town of Westport, County Mayo are being driven to distraction by their confused countrymen attempting to call UK-based late night smut channel Babestation sans international dialling code. By not including the digits 44, instead of being routed through to the home of "Sexy UK Models, Glamour Girls …
Ireland may be a little behind the times, but whole towns don't usually have one phone number between them.
I mean, how does one go about phoning "Westport?" Or does this grumble-line happen to operate exactly the same number of phone lines as there are in Westport, with conveniently overlapping sequences?
Presumably, there is one poor person in Westport who is innundated. And the solution, which would be quite easy (and it's far from the first time this has happened), is for him/her to change number.
But I suppose that wouldn't make such an interesting story.
Apparently babestation has a bunch of 098... numbers, probably so people can call different things that they advertise (or so I figure based on reading some other articles about the problem). So since they have a block of numbers, they would be able to hit a block of people on the unfortunate town.
Happened years ago (lates 80's ?) with Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. Dialing code was 0896 (now 01896) which was very drunkenly close to the premium rate numbers on 0898 for when someone stumbled home from the pub in the mood for a phone call with a hot young lady. Lot's of locals used to get late night calls asking for all sorts of things.....
Not much anyone can do about it other than ask fumble fingered horny drunks to dial carefully as it's too much effort for phone providers to make sure that advertised 0898 numbers do not co-incide with assigned 0896 numbers.
One solution now would be to clearly advertise ROI numbers on-screen.
And the issue of heavily-advertised UK numbers causing problems in Ireland isn't new either.. Back in the 1970s, the Dublin number (01) 811 805 had to be removed from the numbering plan for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who ever watched any of the BBC's Saturday morning TV shows. (UK TV was, and is, widely available and widely watched in the Republic)
Later, and more relevant to this story, when the country's second GSM licensee was running its initial trials, they discovered residential calls were being routed onto their test network. As they hadn't publicised the numbers, it was something of a surprise, and they initially suspected a fault with the landline operator (also operator of the competitor GSM network, so relations weren't cordial)
As it turns out, the cause was that the Irish telecoms regulator had allocated the new network 089 as a dialling prefix* (at the time, the analogue service was 088, and the incumbent GSM operator, 087), but at this time a large number of the late-night one-handed-use numbers in the UK all began with 0898, so Irish viewers were trying to reach those lines and were being routed into the new mobile network, which was something that would be a problem once the 089 number space filled up with customers.
In order to stop this, the operator asked for a new code and was given 086 instead. Since then, 089 has been resurrected for a selection of MVNOs (Tesco, Carphone Warehouse, Lyca..), but that's only because the UK's wank lines have moved to a new prefix that instead bothers the people of Mayo.
There's no reverse problem because a. Irish smut numbers are isolated under the 1598 prefix, which will never connect to a personal customer under the UK plan, and b. there's very little overspill of Irish media advertising into the UK (outside of Northern Ireland)
(* I was determined to get through this post without mentioning STD ... oh, except then)
A friend of mine used to have a home landline number that was a mis-dialled digit away from a local taxi firm, and so often got late night phone calls from people wanting to be taken home from the pub.
If they were pleasant with him, he'd politely tell them to redial the correct number. If they were loud and/or abusive, he'd say "no problem, taxi on it's way - be with you in 10 minutes" and hang up
I work at a place with two non geographical phone numbers, both one digit away from a clinic. I've have had a few embarrassed callers realise their mistake only after they assume their call has been to the direct line of a particular doctor. My exposure to these calls hasn't been too bad:
It's Mrs X doctor and it still itches even with the cream twice a day would shaving help?
Is about the limit of the symptoms described to me over the phone. Other people have had far worse with descriptions that are best left unsaid anywhere.
My office telephone number is similar to that of the local pub (the last two digits are swapped around). This means a high volume of calls from people who misdial and want to book a table. Most people who call react reasonably when told of the mistake, apologise, ring off and I never hear from then again. Some however are so mindlessly arrogant that they are sure that they are incapable of making a mistake. The worst of these being the ones who slam the phone down and then either press redial or dial the number incorrectly again and then proceed to harangue me.
When I get someone even slightly awkward now I confess that yes I really am the receptionist at the "Drunken Jovial Peasant[1]" and that I was in error to claim that they could possibly have misdialled. Now, may I take their booking?[2] Then I take a booking and usually tell them that as an apology I will make sure that there's a free bottle of champagne with the meal.
Oh, the best one was when the pub owner drunkenly misdialled his own number one night then spent an hour arguing with me, demanding to know what I was doing in his pub and telling me he was calling the police.
[1] Name change to protect the guilty.
[2] No I don't know why they don't question that I have told them two mutually exclusive things and have now changed my mind and decided I really am a gastropub. See comment about their arrogance, I suppose.
When I was at university, we had what was called a "Centrex" system. Basically an undersized exchange switch or a PBX on steroids. In any case, you needed to dial only the last five digits of a number, if you were calling from another number on the exchange. Outsiders had to dial the whole number.
The number assigned to me was (area code) 546-6666, meaning that people on campus needed only to dial 66666 to ring my phone. This was apparently quite fun to do, late at night and when one was "under the influence". Good fun for them, but not conducive to my sleeping.
I finally had to open the telephone up and remove the bells. The ringer still made a quiet buzzing noise, which was easy to sleep through. When I left that room, I left the bells in the desk drawer, to save the next poor sod the work of doing the same thing.
// beer, because no bell icon
In my early days, I got wrong numbers a couple of ways:
In the first case, someone looked up my name in the phone book (yes, we had them back when) and since my name matched the name of his realtor (as I remember), and he wanted to play gold that weekend, I was more than happy to oblige, and we setup the tee time. Hopefully the poor sod figured it out when the links didn't have my name or tee time in their books.
In the second case, the numbers were transposed. My number ended in '8488' and the local eatery ended in '8848'. In that case I was more than happy to accept reservations, with "no problem" added.
Presently, it is a little more annoying. The local car wash, which hires anyone who can breathe at something close to minimum wage, has their number as x5yz, and my number is x8yz (numbers redacted for convenience). This leads to getting phone calls as dawn is breaking asking about employment and such, which is not conducive to my current sleep pattern (being awake with hours with single digits, ugh!). I stumble across the room and pick up the phone while my wonderful wife starts cursing at the phone. I TRY to be polite, indicating that they shouldn't have such fumbly fingers, and hope for no repeat call.
All in all I try to make the best of it in my own special way. (Chuckle, chuckle!).
a long long time ago, being a bearded BBC television engineer, in a basement storeroom office, I had a phone number actually published for entrance enquiries for place at a local catholic girls boarding school;
after maybe ten calls, I just had to rig an outgoing message with instructions to swap the last two digits for the correct unpublished number - it still got messages left.............
and
once I watched a journo grab an external direct line; dial nine for an outside line and a local 993 number - he had to spend the next five minutes explaining to the 999 operator that he had miss-dialed....
and
the one where another grabbed a blue handset and tried dialing on a brown phone - next to the blue one, with a brown handset resting on it.....
wondering why it didn't work.... - it was 3am, so he could have been not with it....
TVC is now closed - memories..........
I always loved it when people would dial me by accident but then ask me "Are you sure?" after I stated my name... Happened to me several times.
The most entertaining time was when I had a work-issued satellite phone. Part of the plan included a 'local' number that people could call me on without dialing an international number. They kept calling back trying to reach someone I had never heard of, then accuse me of stealing the phone of the person they were trying to reach. All the while I kept telling them that they are making the most expensive phone call they'll ever make ($20 to connect, $5/minute afterwards with a 1 minute minimum). They stopped calling the beginning of the following month, probably because they realized I wasn't lying, and by my calculations, now had to pay about $750 to their phone company.
This was many years ago, so Sat-phone calls were even more of rip-off than they are now.
There's not a lot you can do about it really you will get the same number ranges appearing in different countries.
+353 98 XX XXX
dialled 098 XX XXX in Ireland is just a normal landline number that would have been in service probably been assigned and in use since the 1960s, if not earlier.
The issue is the UK have assigned clashing codes for premium rate numbers in one of OfCom's regular confusing new number ranges for special rate services.
Because the UK premium rate numbers are longer, it's likely that some Westport number(s) are being dialled repeatedly as the phone will start ringing after 098 + 5 digits, shorter than the UK number. So it could be a whole range of sex lines getting some random person's house.
Even if people wanted to call that number 00 44 98 XXX XX XX it would be unlikely to work as the call would not be billable at premium rate internationally.
It's the same between France and French speaking parts of Belgium, Switzerland etc. The Netherlands and Belgium, Germany and Austria etc. People occasionally misdial.
That's one of the reasons that Ireland uses 1800 rather than 0800 for freephone / toll-free.
Premium rate in Ireland is 15XX XX XX XX
For example 1550 XX XX XX "Fifteen Fifty"
"Local Rate" (whatever that means any more) is 1850 (Eighteen Fifty) or 1890 (Eighteen Ninety)
Oddly enough for those number ranges we tend to call them out French style.
For example to report a gas leak : 1850 20 50 50 "Eighteen Fifty Twenty Fifty Fifty"
Why hasn't the ever-interfering EU (at least that's what my Brexiteer mother calls it) harmonised premium rate numbers, in the same way they harmonised mobile to 07 numbers and emergency calls to 112?
Where are the interfering, busybody Eurocrats when you need them?
It would actually make matters worse. It would be better for neighbouring language countries to have visibly different numbering.
If Irish freephone was 0800 for example instead of 1800 we would have endless misdialling and no idea which 800 number was which.
its also almost impossible to avoid clashing with Irish landline numbering. It works quite differently from the UK, with each geographic region has a prefix and that's broken down into sub prefixes hierarchically,with the main city / town taking 1 usually.. it makes it very easy to figure out where a landline is.
The system uses almost the entire range though - 01 Dublin, 02 Cork region (021 Cork City, 022, 023...029 smaller towns), 03 - not used, 04, 05, 06, 07 & 09 are all in use and 08X XXX XXXX is mobile. Lower population areas use 5 digit local numbering, higher population 6 or 7 digit with the whole thing being slowly moved towards 7.
So basically, no matter what you assign in the UK it would potentially clash so, there's no point in worrying about it! It's the same between Austria and Germany etc.
Unless you'd a single EU numbering system and got rid of country codes and national dialling, you can't really resolve this minor annoyance.
07 isn't harmonised across the EU at all.
In Ireland It's the Sligo & Donegal / Northwest region in Ireland 071 XXX XXXX and 074 XXX XXXX
076 is weirdly used for VoIP non geographic numbers and everyone thinks they're ringing Donegal or Sligo somewhere.
07 xx xx xx xx in France is a mobile number.
Spain doesn't have 0, neither does Denmark or any closed numbering system without areas codes.
In general, harmonising phone numbering is really difficult as these things evolved from systems that were planned in the 1950s or earlier in most countries. You've a few narrow ranges like 112, 116 XXX etc that were clear to use in all countries.
112, the 116 codes and the 00 800 freephone systems are the only ones that are really harmonised.
The EU had a discussion about harmonising into a single country code in the 1990s but it was so ridiculously messy they gave up.
French mobile phone numbers start 06.
112 isn't really hamonized. France has separate 2-digit emergency numbers for each service, 112 just connects to paramedics as a catchall. It won't help if you actually want the police, they'll just tell you to hang up and dial 17.
It's pretty typical EU "standardization", a compromise that sort of works because none of the EU members will actually agree to change anything so that things would really be the same.
Changing phone numbers en masse can cause issues too.
The dialling code for Leeds was changed from 0532 to 0113, existing 6 digit numbers were converted to 7 digits by adding a prefix of 2. This was widely and mistakenly interpreted that the dialling code for Leeds was now 01132. When a large telephone bank was allocated some of the newly created range of numbers, some of their customers insisted on using what they thought was the Leeds dialling code, rather than dialling the number on the correspondence. I had one particularly irate gentleman accuse me of lying when I refused to deal with his banking enquiry. I asked him to read out the number he had been given, he quickly answered 011323nnnnnn. So I asked him to slowly read it out one digit at a time, Oh-One-One-Three-Three-Fuck-Off-CLICK.
Looking back, I should have asked for his account details, home address and mother's maiden name...
We once had a time-share in the mountains of western North Carolina. We used to get calls all the time, especially in the middle of the night, from folks wanting to set up a week rental. Their problem was failing to dial the area code. Since they were a ""local"" call (within the same LATA), they would get us instead of the booking office of the time-share group. More than once we've had to tell them they have to dial the area code and probably a 1 in front of that since it would be an in-state long distance call.
Then there was the several months where my cell phone would ring and folks were wanting their vehicles inspected, repaired or to be able to come pick them up. Same thing as above, exact same number but different area code. I actually took a drive over there one day and pointed out the problem to their management. It was funny that while talking with them, my cell rang and someone was asking about getting their oil changed. I simply turned on the speaker phone and asked them who they were calling and to please repeat their request. That was really all it took since management thought I was crazy talking. They immediately set about getting all their signage fixed to include the area code and even added "You must dial the area code!" to them.
Sadly i did not get a free oil change for my troubles :(
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